How can I tell what to upgrade in my PC?

My PC was built for me, and it performs very well, but I want to keep it that way. It can even run The Witcher 2 on ultra with Ubersampling enabled, though I get occasional FPS drops. What would you all recommend I upgrade next to help boost performance? Here is what I currently have:

Thanks for any help or advice in advance.

Edit: As you guys can see in a later post, these are not my PC specs. The program I used to detect them kinda gave me COMPLETELY wrong results. Actual accurate specs posted below.

Must be a troll post.

Your rig is pretty weak.

Get another GTX 980 so you can have 2 in SLI.

Then you might be able to handle the newest games like The Witcher 3.

I recommend a couple of NVIDIA Titan X's if you're looking for that steep performance increase that will keep you future-proof for awhile.

Make sure you've got a 1000Watts PSU, buy yourself 3 more 980s, make sure you have 4 way SLI MOBO.

crank that up

Need more Titan X

Troll post.

If you really want to spend money:

• Monitor
• Mouse + pad
• Keyboard
• Sound (headphones, speakers)

Why would some of you believe my post is a troll post? I assumed my PC was relatively powerful, keep in mind I didn't build it myself and have no knowledge of how to build one.

So should I replace my current graphics cards with Titan X's? Or should I get another 980? I'll upgrade my PSU to a 1,000w, I kinda already figured out I need a new, more powerful one.

I swear I'm not a troll, just fairly new to gaming on PC.

Also, what's a 4 way SLI MOBO?

If your doing 1080 or 1440 just get another 980.

If not a troll post, follow this advice.

Your pc is already really powerful, unless you are a serious gamer (which from you saying you dont know how to build a pc i assume you are not) you dont need to upgrade anything.

@Nick3306: I'm a serious gamer, been playing games for 26 years, just didn't do it on PC as much as I did console. So people are saying my post is a troll post because my PC is already pretty powerful?

That is correct. It isn't everyday that someone has hardware like yours and doesn't exactly know how good it is. Usually people who are willing to spend that much money on a pc know all about the parts.

Your PC is "pretty powerful" indeed. You don't need to upgrade anything for a long time.

@Nick3306: I see. Thank you so much for clarifying. Maybe I should learn more about parts just to be safe in the future. Apologies for coming across as a troll everyone.

@MasterTankallex: First off don't use uber sampling ever. It's such a hog for zero benefit over a low end anti aliasing technique. Your system is top of the line and better then 90% of systems used for gaming so all your games should be ultra settings at great frames with zero issues. If anything look up settings, what they do and how hard they are on your system because if your not getting good performance out of that rig it's your own fault 100%. It's probably just good to do some research on what's in your computer find out what it is capable of, then find out what settings do and what your card can handle which is anything you throw at it at 1080p or even 1600p

Though if upgrading is something you want to do buy another of the same 980 card and put into a sli configuration. Only thing you can do unless you have no SSd's then well you could invest in those as they make shit so much faster to load.

Well, your PC is quite powerful the way it is but maybe you could buy another 980.

No need in Titan Xs; 4 way SLI MOBO I recommend: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gaz97xgaminggt or http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-gag1sniper5

I would go with the Sniper, not because of the "cool" name but because it's EATX MOBO which means it's larger than standart MOBOs - means it'll provide better temps for the 4 GPU setup.

its because that PC is the very definition of "the 1%"

Well guys, I feel like an ass. Apparently the program I was using to detect my system specs wasn't being entirely honest. Actually, the complete opposite. I knew something seemed fishy. This is my actual system specs, so I HIGHLY doubt they are close to as good as originally posted. Here ya go:

Processor AMD FX(tm)-6300 Six-Core Processor

Manufacturer AMD

Speed 3.5 GHz

Number of Cores 6

Video Card AMD Radeon R9 200 Series

Manufacturer ATI

Chipset AMD Radeon R9 200 Series

Dedicated Memory 4.1 GB

Total Memory 4.0 GB

Memory 8.2 GB

Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit

Service Pack 1

Size 64 Bit

Edition Ultimate

Display Maximum Resolution 1360 x 768

DVD HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH24NSB0 ATA Device

CD HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH24NSB0 ATA Device

Drive 1

Size 896.5 GB

Free 743.4 GB

Drive 2

Size 34.9 GB

Free 24.0 GB

Not even Nvidia, but AMD. Sorry about that.

@MasterTankallex: What AMD card is it? R9 290 / 290X?

As far as everything else.. if you want to keep the same mobo then get FX-8350. If you're willing to get another mobo + CPU then go for i5 4690K + Z97 mobo.

@insane_metalist: I'm not entirely sure, I believe it's just a 290.

Program to check my specs..... Ugh (Shakes head).... It's like the last guy who tried to check his resolution with an online site lol. His was a bit more ridiculous but this is almost on par.

Come on man your computer tells you all this stuff itself, you don't need third party software to know what your running. Just right click my computer and hit properties, or you can find it all in your device manager. I'm going to make a suggestion. You should maybe take a few hours and try to learn the basics of windows, and the various stuff related to gaming on a windows platform. It's obvious your new to all this and don't know too much about computers so to save yourself the trouble of downloading software that is most likely malicious, and accompanied by other spyware/malware or adds ons, search bars etc.. You should really do a little learning. Because with the path your going down your only going to infect it, slow it down and give away everything you do online to the highest bidder. If you haven't all ready with what ever that program you used is.

I recommend Linus tech tips. He's got amazing videos explain all sorts of things about pc's and pc gaming related subjects all in video format on youtube.

R9 290 is a good card you don't need to upgrade it. As far as everything else.. it's in my post above.

@insane_metalist: Wow, I'm going to take some feedback from above and learn more about my PC, because I looked at my specs from above and I can see I have an R9 200, not a 290 or 290X.

I'm gonna make it easier for you. Download "Speccy" it lists all of exact your components and post em here.
It says you have an R9 200 series with 4GB of memory so it's likely an R9 290/290X unless you bought a 4GB R9 270X.

Or he could just go to his device manager or click properties on the control panel and get it from there. I all ready told him where to find the information it's a search and click away. Far easier then finding then downloading then installing third party software.

The easiest option available to find your specs is to hit the start button, type "dxdiag.exe," and hit enter. A box may appear asking for permission (just hit agree, blah blah), and a box with a few tabs will appear. The first tab "System" will have information regarding your motherboard (MOBO) model, processor (CPU), bios version, memory (RAM), etc. The other tabs marked "Display (#)" will tell you the exact model of your graphics card (GPU). The "R9 200" is just an umbrella term for the R9 series (ie. the R9 300 series is set to release later this year).

If you have any number higher than a R9 280, and assuming your resolution really is only 1360x768 and you are really looking for a quick, cheap upgrade, then I would probably suggest that you just buy a $30 CPU cooler such as the "CoolerMaster 212+" or "212 EVO", whichever you feel is worth your money as proper application of thermal paste between the CPU and the cooler seems to make more difference than any variance in cooling performance between those two models. Back on point, a decent $30 cooler should allow you to easily push that FX 6300 from 3.5GHz to around 4.0GHz, depending on the quality of your motherboard. In newer games that take advantage of many threads, overclocking even a modest 500MHz should yield some pretty respectable jumps (25fps in CPU-bottlenecked games may see 28-35fps at that point). Planetside 2 could be a fantastic demonstration for CPU overclocking gains.

I too have a 6 core AMD cpu. It's an old Phenom II from early 2010, and it overclocks like a champ! Because you're really new to PC components and the like, or if overclocking makes you anxious, just watch a few youtube videos. Youtube could probably teach brain surgery. You just have to get familiar with your motherboard and bios and get a feel for what is stable for your system. Hope this helped a little, and sorry if late - and for the wall of text.

@Weird_Jerk: Don't worry about the response time, you were actually incredibly helpful. I found I have the R9 280X.

So would it be worth it to spend a few hundred and upgrade my CPU and GPU?

Few hundred? If you're willing to spend $220 on CPU: i5 4690K and around $100 on mobo then yes it is very much worth it.
You GPU is still good.

To be honest your not running a bad computer it's a nice mid range pc. And in the very very close future the new chips from intel and amd, and cards from both nvidia and AMD will be out. Unless your not happy with your current performance (without super sampling) I'd recommend just waiting until the next series of both drops and you can be 100% up to date. With DX12 coming this summer it's possible that being up to date hardware wise even though it's compatible on older keplar and similar AMD cards, could very well give even more performance gain with cards released with it directly in mind.

Till then you should just overclock the CPU like weird_jerk stated. Though if the small stock fan is all that is on it you will have to invest some into a new CPU cooler though they go for cheap. Linus tech tips the youtube channel has two whole how to overclock guides.

Better late then never I suppose about learning about your hardware

But as your fps issues with The Witcher 2, its the ubersampling which is like supersampling. Just disable that option you will be golden,that setting is very taxing on the gpu.

Now another thing that might want to look at is that resolution you are running, is really low. With low resolutions and or settings your cpu has to feed the gpu more data more quickly since the gpu has to spend less time processing the smaller chunks of the data to render. This basically highlights your cpu being the weakest link not being able to feed the data quick enough, so I would use a higher resolution to help lessen the rate the cpu has to feed the gpu. So when you up the resolution your framerates should stabilize and not drop as much, but keep in mind that your averages and max frame rates will lower because of the higher settings.

FX 6300 is a ok cpu but it lacks the ability to handlethe 280x in all circumstances so grabbing an intel i5 will increase performance overall and in some cpu bound instances nearly double it.

I really appreciate all the help and advice you guys, I know it isn't easy working with someone so new to owning a gaming PC.

I think I got the answers I was looking for while I was hear, and I'm going to take some time to learn more about my PC.

I'm finding this all very odd.

You've seriously just paid a company good money for a new pc and you don't even know if you're sporting an nvidia or an amd gpu?

... And you're talking about upgrades... already?

Ya'll posting in a troll thread.

What program did you use that gave you the false results?

@kraken2109: I went to www.systemrequirementslab.com, and when I went to "about my PC" on the top, it said my PC had all those specs I originally posted. Seemed fishy to me when I took a closer look, so I hit "refresh my PC info" or whatever, then the site had me update my Java, install Some sort of desktop app, and my correct specs were displayed. Once again, sorry for the original confusion.

because that site is beyond terrible

I don't know. I'm more of an on-the-cheap type of person. I built my whole system over 2 years ago for a budget of ~$600, and the only time I see any less than 25 fps in a game is planetside 2 during 90+ vs 90+ battles with everything set to ultra at 1080p. The game looks fantastic, but the drops in frames can take away from some of the fun, so intel cores would be better suited for that task. All in all, it's because the game was coded on DX9.

Now, your cpu is still fairly capable. If you took others' advice, you would very unlikely see any less than 45 fps in any game (except maybe Crysis 3 on ultra with MSAA maxed, The Witcher 3 with ubersampling, and maybe a handful of other games) because most other games are not nearly as CPU limiting as that game. Most of the time you see low fps with modern intel processors (Sandy Bridge i5/i7 2xxx series and later) is simply because the graphics card, rather than your processor, is the bottleneck.

DX12 is a completely different story. DX12, set to release later this year...or something... is supposed to offload much of the work from the CPU to the GPU, which is much faster to process large amounts of information at any given time compared to a cpu. DX12 and future APIs are set to breathe new life into even AMD Athlon cpus, assuming your graphics card can handle picking up the extra slack. With newer drivers and support, your graphics card is like 1.7x what my GTX 660 is, and I feel that it is currently capable enough for my needs. At your native resolution with about half the pixels of 1080p, a 280X in its own right could crush just about any game with any settings, I'd imagine.

For the time being though, if you do have the upgrade itch, I would purchase a decent aftermarket cooler and attempt a mild OC. I really think you would be pleasantly surprised with your gains. If not, that cpu cooler will have been an inevitable upgrade for your new intel cpu and motherboard. :P Keep in mind though, that waiting is usually the better deal; why buy top-of-line parts now for top-of-line parts' prices when their potential will not be fully tapped (assuming you do not have a 120/144Hz monitor that actually can refresh fast enough to display every frame above 60+) until much later? I usually research parts, look at benchmarks, and gauge how well I feel a certain component will perform before I buy it. That way, I am able to understand what is the baseline for what I need, so I can swoop in later and pick up a relatively powerful-but-currently-mid-tier part that suits my needs at that point in time with very little out of pocket.

Best of luck on your purchases and tinkering! :)

I have 2 GTX 970s and an i7 4770k and I still don't consider myself in the 1%.

@RyviusARC said:

@wis3boi said:

@MasterTankallex said:

@Nick3306: I see. Thank you so much for clarifying. Maybe I should learn more about parts just to be safe in the future. Apologies for coming across as a troll everyone.

its because that PC is the very definition of "the 1%"

I have 2 GTX 970s and an i7 4770k and I still don't consider myself in the 1%.

may i ask what case is that?

I'd get the new 8 pack 2000 watt PSU. More power = more FPS.

Corsair Air 540. I was able to get it bundled with 3 extra cougar 120mm fans for 79USD.

you upgrade by getting an alienware computer, cuase theres no best then alienware why do you think pros only the best use it cause its the best

@MasterTankallex: I have been gaming for awhile too, and also just switched to PC gaming recently. If I was you I would just do research on parts on google check out linustechtips on YouTube can help you learn PC parts and how they all work. Use www.pcpartpicker.com add all your current parts then just switch the ones you want to change to make sure they are compatible with your computer. How much you willing to spend?

@MasterTankallex: with a 980 GTX you can run upcoming titles like witcher 3 on 90 fps unless you're a 4K gamer which your system still can run it on 30 fps